Editor’s Note: Lindsey Barstow, a student at F.R.C.S. High School in Plainville, was given a summer assignment to write an essay on a social issue for publication in a newspaper. After a visit to ground zero in New York City, Barstow chose to writer about the proposed mosque in New York City.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice...” Wait. Stop there. Is building a mosque on ground zero what you would call “justice”? The people of New York have suffered at the hands of extreme Muslim terrorists. Where the World Trade Center once stood is a burial ground in remembrance of every life lost. With all the pain, suffering, and loss New Yorkers and Americans still feel today, where is the understanding from the Muslim community? Why there? In the Constitution, we all have the right to religious freedom. Building the mosque in a different area wouldn’t be taking away that religious freedom, but it would let the American people know that the Muslim community is standing with America against the attack on 9/11.

This would go a long way in healing Muslim-American relations, while still supporting our constitution. If the Muslim people are doing what they say they’re doing by building this Mosque, which is to “form unity in the community,” then why are the approval rates so low? How is this going to cure the damaged relations between Muslims and Americans when only 34 percent agree with the project? That doesn’t seem like “forming unity in a community” to me.

The only common sense solution is the Muslim community first realizing that the mosque will destroy Americans already damaged unity with them; second, building it far away from where the World Trade Center fell; and third, in doing this, show their understanding towards the damaged hearts of Americans.

People make this out to be an issue on freedom of religion, but it’s not about that. This is about doing the right thing for our fellow Americans whose lives have been lost, as well as the family members and friends of those who passed.